Now everyone knows I'm an avid Nintendo fanboy and have sought endless reasons to rail against HD gaming, but its quite clear that this generation, no matter how you slice it is a dissapointment in terms of games.

I mean, don't you remember when games were actually fun and not just efforts we saluted for their ability to deliver an impressive cinematic experience or rise up ever so slightly from the mediocrity surrounding them? More and more we seem to be giving games a free pass on being able to impress us rather than engross us.

The Wii has become the phenomenal novelty relegated to virtually no serious third party support while being guided by the direction of a Company whose wisdom draws under ever increasing scrutiny, even by fans who so desperately want to believe they in any way know what they're doing outside of cultivating the casual market. Nintendo's chronic habit of tunnel vision market focus while chasing off every viable second party developer leaves many questioning do they have any desire to create a product of multi-demographic appeal. Every year we listen to the promises of serious support and a dramatic turn around but all we ever seem to see change is the number of hardware units sold. Games like No More Heroes and Madworld at best leave us hoping they will seed sequels we can call complete games. Ports are nice, but so few are even done right, what's the point? And why does every studio feel the obligation to devote not even one fourth the resources to developing a serious Wii Game that would have been dedicated to developing any PS2/Gamecube/Xbox game last generation? Having last generation graphics is one thing, but not even taking the fullest advantage of those is just insulting, but unfortunately the standard. It seems developers have forgotten how to make games on such a template... Or maybe just don't care.

HD gaming is the legacy of last generation's Xbox, even on the PS3... It's primarily gamers who wouldn't be gaming today had the Xbox not lured them back with promises of Spike-TV style violence and hyper masculenity. Guns, guts and glory are the standard of the day and if a game doesn't feature a thick necked male archetype for them to project themselves upon or a sexy scantily clad woman for them to drule over then the game is almost certainly doomed to failure. Kid ourselves as we like, HD gaming is casual gaming too, genres and franchises made increasingly less focused and less specialized to appeal to the typical cassual college student or skill lacking grade school kid that drives the success of this brand of gaming. Games like MGS4 get away with having cumbersome controls and a muddy sense of game refinement by having breathtaking cinematic direction and presentation. Games like DMC4 get away with being unremakably linnear and uninspired by featuring flashy cinematics, emo character designs and music. Games like RE5 get away with having criminally bad A.I. and terrible story by boasting beautiful graphics and again, Cinematic direction that leaves the audience in Awe. In the end do we really have any fun playing these or do you we just sollute them for their academic and cinematic achievements as games? Is it possible to even enjoy an HD game anymore without defaulting on Co-Op or Online Play as its backbone? What ever happened to game planners creating planned encounters or scenarios in the games, why does every signature HD game have to boast a new and unrefined gameplay experience that tries to let the game formulate its own rhyme and reason from a mess of muddy A.I.

Eitherway, both the Wii and HD gaming are thriving on people who would not be playing video games right now had these two options not existed. Neither is a viable successor to the PS2 or its brand of gaming.

So desperately people try to kid themselves that games like RE5, Halo 3, Killzone 2 and MGS4 are the pinacles of what gaming should be and so desperately people try to kid themselves that games like Red Steel, Madworld and Zack & Wiki are "decent" games.

Will gaming ever recover from this slump. The answer is most likely yes, but alternatively we could see gaming take the path of the movie industry where formulated mediocrity is the standard where only slightly more refined mediocrity ever rises above the masses of easily forgotten movies.

Unless Nintendo can rememerge with a new console and recapture more of the market, then its unlikely we'll see any force of standardization as its all Sony can to do play follow the leader. Has Nintendo learned from past mistakes? Do they have a master plan for expanding their market? The answer seems to hint more and more at no.

Mind you, this is not written out of depression or hopelessness, but an honest look at the gaming industry from a most skeptical viewpoint as I find universally most gamers don't like talking about negative things while kidding themselves whatever they want to believe about gaming to be true. Agree or Dissagree, that's fine, I've grossly over simplified a much more complex situation in my post so its only natural there will be disenting opinions and those who feel these notions too harsh or unreasonable. Hopefully this doesn't degenerate into a big fight, but who knows.

Also, in before Okey Dokey's hit and run trolling (lol), Stof's "Oh god, there goes Onimusha12 again, sigh..." or Ari Gold's trademark: "Nothing on the Wii interests me." ;)

*looks up from behind his DS* Huh? What? Are you really concerned about this?? they are just Games...

Yes. It's really what I call fun. I'm having a lot of fun.

Please don't hold up the PS2 as some kind of gold standard. It isn't. If you want a gold standard, look at how the NES did in Japan. Or, I suppose, how the Wii is doing in the states.

I am happy with my games and I barely bought any this generation. I have enough VC/WW games to keep me busy also.

"Has Nintendo learned from past mistakes? Do they have a master plan for expanding their market? The answer seems to hint more and more at no."

What do you mean by 'expanding their market', Onimusha?...Isn´t that what they did with the DS and are doing with the Wii?...or am I misinterpreting?

I like videogames this generation. I've had fun with a lot of different games, regardless of genre. Maybe I'm just weird like that.

Cinematics really destroyed much of the gameplay/story we enjoyed in the older days, then you actually played the scenes instead of just watching it.

I remember when videogames were fun.

It was about two hours ago before I had to start wallpapering the bedroom.

Ah, those were the good times: Deadly Creatures, Endless Ocean, Shaun White on the balanceboard and - the hardest of the hardcore - Wii Music.

Really.

But the good times will come gain.

In about another five hours.

I promised the wife.

I've found this generation to be in my top three in regard to fun, right up there with N64/PS1 and SNES/Genesis.

There's a difference between a game that has good cinematography and graphics just for the sake of them and those that use them to actually enhance the game. Resident Evil 5's fantasticd graphics and well-paced cutscenes help to immerse you in the game, making it more fun. The enemy AI is only poor because it would be completely unfair to have fifty incredibly-intelligent guys just run at you and endlessly stab you.

I think it's great that we're at a point in gaming where something fast-paced and irreverant like Brawl or Mario Kart can coexist nicely with something like Metal Gear Solid. I can appreciate and have fun with almost any genre of game, as long as it's done well. There's no one way to have a good game. Indigo Prophecy is a fantastic game, as are Halo, Zelda, Breakdown (seriously, someone needs to play it), Riddick, Splinter Cell, Metroid, Castlevania, etc. All of these genres have a place--as long as they do it modestly.

i like this gens gaming is a gen gen for shooter and action fans the only thing is games are taken longer to come out than past gens and some last gen features are gone like local multi player